Thanks for the effort, I wish I had coding skills to support your effort, but I do not. I just wanted to offer another idea to get this done; would it be possible to use USB "soundcards" for each zone, and then use individual amps (might be more flexible and lower cost)?

That way the distributed audio could be centralized (at the core location with speaker wires to each zone), or they could be separated to each Media Director in each zone (I would imagine synchronizing the audio would then be the hurdle). If the idea has merit, I'd like to help somehow; I can donate the hardware if it helped the cause...

It's definitely a good idea to support the use of multiple sound cards as 'sources'. I think that sort of approach could be rolled into the concept. As I figure out more about how this will be working I'll try to include that.

I'm taking the plunge. Time to start building some interfaces... I'm attempting to develop a LinuxMCE 'proper' control system for a whole house audio system.

The ideal result would be the ability to select media from the core (or any media device) and route it through the central distribution system to any/all of the rooms. Ideally this would be 'proper' in that you wouldn't get two devices fighting for the same output... and ideally you wouldn't have to have hard 'locks' on the devices such that you'd have to go to the other room to 'release' a zone before someone else could use it.

Each of the 6 outputs will be hard-wired to a pair of amplifier channels dedicated to each room.

So, the questions:

1. How best to design this for LMCE compatibility?2. Can I embed multiple RS232 controllers and the code to run each one into a single LMCE DCE device with 18 sub-zones? Or do I need to frankenstein something up to make each 6x6 switch a separate 'zone controller' with 6 sub-zones?3. Anyone willing to tutor a bit if I get stuck working on it (I will)?

I am currently using 10.04 and the ATI card onboard is what is hooked to the monitor in the server room.

Before that I was using a PCIe Nvidia Card I think the 8200 or sometthing. You do have to go into BIOS and set up the onboard devices to use the PCIe slot first.

Currently with the almost latest 10.04 install DVD LMCE-1004-20120412224425879.iso, the ATI card is functioning well, but this server sits in a closet in my office, if you intend to use it for your main viewing as well as serving PC, keep using your Nvidia card.

Good to know someone has this working, but I was hoping to use this as a hybrid. Have you ever used the digital sound out on this motherboard?

That setup is great. I know you were in chat last night but I was in and out.

I am left wondering if you disabled the onboard nvidia chipset in bios?

Onboard video is disabled.

The only problem with the setup is the sound distortion I'm getting with digital output and some slow-down/choppy video with high bitrate encoding. This was _not_ a problem with 0810 or without digital audio, so I am guessing there is a alsa/pulseaudio issue, but I can't figure it out.

Here's the link to the diagnostics I've acquired so far in 12.04: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+question/195585.

I've previously sent you a bunch of diagnostics from the 10.04 build, but the distortion in sound is identical. I just got in some optical links, so I'm going to try to bypass the HDMI tonight and see if I can get clean sound out that way. However, I think it's a driver issue, as I'm getting the distortion even on the headphone out via front panel.

I think I'm done playing with my current hardware setup. It's just too painful to get working. Could anyone point me to a semi-modern, 1080p capable hybrid configuration that I won't have to futz with?